New Xbox 360 dashboard “slightly delayed” (Updated)

For those following along with the news of a new Xbox 360 dashboard on the horizon, today was supposed to be the day. But like a kid that snuck down to the Christmas tree and found no presents, gamers that turned on their consoles hoping to begin the update process this morning were left disappointed.

Thankfully, whatever issue is plaguing the update came before the release of the new dashboard—better a delayed release than a broken one. Microsoft has yet to give an explanation for the delay, but it has confirmed that something is up. Xbox spokesman Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb tweeted the news earlier today, saying: “The timing for the Xbox 360 dashboard update has been slightly delayed. I’ll have a status update later today.”

Hyrb originally tweet yesterday that the dashboard update would be available for everyone at 10am EST. He has since tweeted a few more times thanking fans for their patience and promising more details “when I have more to share.” He also has promised an updated sometime this afternoon.

That could mean that it is an unspecified error that Microsoft hasn’t identified yet, or it knows exactly what is wrong but simply isn’t willing to detail what is going on, which would be in keeping with its (and most companies) practices.

Besides just a snazzy new look, the dashboard will help to further integrate the 50 new apps that Microsoft has lined up. The update will also help to streamline connectivity between the console, PCs, and Windows smartphones, as well as offering improvements to the Kinect’s voice recognition interface.

Hopefully this will be nothing more than a minor hurdle in what will otherwise be an easy integration. Of course, if this year has shown us anything, it is that seemingly minor incidents can quickly become major ones.

Update: Still no word on what the holdup is, but at 3:45, Hyrb posted “Sorry for the dash launch delay. Good news: first set of customers will be getting the Xbox LIVE update within the next few hours.”